“‘God will help you.  He will.  He will.’

“As if it was true, Betty!  As if there was a God—­and—­He had not forgotten me.  I did not know what I was doing, but I put out my hand and caught at his sleeve, and when I looked up into his face, I saw in his kind, good eyes, that he knew—­that somehow—­God knows how—­he understood and that I need not utter a word to explain to him that he had been listening to lies.”

“Did you talk to him?” Betty asked quietly.

“He talked to me.  We did not even speak of Nigel.  He talked to me as I had never heard anyone talk before.  Somehow he filled the room with something real, which was hope and comfort and like warmth, which kept my soul from shivering.  The tears poured from my eyes at first, but the lump in my throat went away, and when Nigel came back I actually did not feel frightened, though he looked at me and sneered quietly.”

“Did he say anything afterwards?”

“He laughed a little cold laugh and said, ’I see you have been seeking the consolation of religion.  Neurotic women like confessors.  I do not object to your confessing, if you confess your own backslidings and not mine.’”

“That was the beginning,” said Betty speculatively.  “The unexpected thing was the end.  Tell me the rest?”

“No one could have dreamed of it,” Rosy broke forth.  “For weeks he was almost like other people.  He stayed at Stornham and spent his days in shooting.  He professed that he was rather enjoying himself in a dull way.  He encouraged me to go to the vicarage, he invited the Ffolliotts here.  He said Mrs. Ffolliott was a gentlewoman and good for me.  He said it was proper that I should interest myself in parish work.  Once or twice he even brought some little message to me from Mr. Ffolliott.”

It was a pitiably simple story.  Betty saw, through its relation, the unconsciousness of the easily allured victim, the adroit leading on from step to step, the ordinary, natural, seeming method which arranged opportunities.  The two had been thrown together at the Court, at the vicarage, the church and in the village, and the hawk had looked on and bided his time.  For the first time in her years of exile, Rosy had begun to feel that she might be allowed a friend—­though she lived in secret tremor lest the normal liberty permitted her should suddenly be snatched away.

“We never talked of Nigel,” she said, twisting her hands.  “But he made me begin to live again.  He talked to me of Something that watched and would not leave me—­would never leave me.  I was learning to believe it.  Sometimes when I walked through the wood to the village, I used to stop among the trees and look up at the bits of sky between the branches, and listen to the sound in the leaves—­the sound that never stops—­and it seemed as if it was saying something to me.  And I would clasp my hands and whisper, ‘Yes, yes,’ ‘I will,’ ‘I will.’  I used to see Nigel looking